Another poet lost. Remembering the dead - especially the children.

 Yesterday came the news that our poet Benjamin Zephaniah had died. I wrote about it. Then late yesterday evening I heard on a news channel about the death of a poet in Palestine: 

“Refaat Alareer, one of the founders of the ‘We Are Not Numbers’ project and professor at the Islamic University of Gaza, was killed by an Israeli airstrike.”

Here is one of the last things he wrote:

If I must die, 

you must live

to tell my story

to sell my things

to buy a piece of cloth

and some strings,

(Make it white with a long tail)

so that a child, somewhere in Gaza

while looking heaven in the eye

Awaiting his dad who left in a blaze -

and bid no one farewell

not even to his flesh

not even to himself -

sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up

above

and thinks for a moment an angel is there

bringing a love,

if I must die

let it bring hope

let it be a tale

It is never a good time to lose poets. We need them to remind us of the importance of things like kites. 

My german friend Heidy posted this earlier today:

“Last night, I saw a programme on German TV where they reported that they were putting together an exhibition of all the belongings they have found of the Israeli victims of the Hamas attack of 7th October and they said they also want this exhibition to tour the world to illustrate the cruelty of this attack.

It would be very hard and actually impossible to do the same for the 17,177 Palestinian victims of Israel's bombardment of Gaza identified so far because their belongings will be buried under the rubble - not to mention the 7,600 Palestinians who are still missing, most likely also buried beneath the rubble, and who they have not been able to dig out yet. Or just imagine an exhibition just of the teddy bears and toys of the 7,000+ children that have been killed in Gaza so far...”

And a friend of a friend reports this:

“ex-ambassador Craig Murray: 'The world has been jolted, suddenly. Masks have been ripped off. Almost the entire political Establishment of the West have outed themselves as enthusiastic proponents of a racial supremacism, prepared to give active assistance to a genocide of indigenous people.' 

As Murray also notes: 'Every single state in the world has a positive duty to intervene to prevent the Genocide in Gaza now' by invoking the Genocide Convention – even before an international court has had time to officially determine that a genocide is being carried out. This was made clear in a judgment by the International Court of Justice in 2007 regarding Bosnia and Serbia.’”

In the meantime my daughter and I continue with our rather subdued preparations for Christmas. But we now have a Christmas cake at least, and I finally gave in and bought mince pies. After all …

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!